As Syd explained, “It´s the Montevideo (Portones, Punta Carretas, et al) Shopping model. Throw in an incongruous English word and you become exotic.”
Tienda Inglesa, exotic. Who knew?
Más inglés
Category: Commerce
Products, services, marketing, names
“Real Estate” — in Uruguay — huh?
In case I’m being too obtuse, ray-al es-tot-ay is not in the language of this country. Does it matter? (But what’s the point of using English?)
OK, maybe in the morning I’ll call the number and see if they speak English. Maybe. Their web site ain’t promising in that regard.
The escribano’s handwriting
I was with an escribano (basically, a lawyer for two parties in agreement) getting paperwork done, and was so stunned with his handwriting that I took a picture when he was out of the room:
The first line: my address
Second: townThird: marital status
Fourth: wife’s name – that might be a question mark because I’m not sure what my wife’s proper name is in Uruguay, and I hesitated. She got one from migración, a different one from the Corte Electoral when we became citizens.
Amazingly, it was all correct when he produced the finished document.
And we’re not in it
For the first time in six years, I have phone books. For the entire country, outside of Montevideo, maybe 1.5 million people. (Half the population lives in Montevideo.)
I was returning my shopping cart outside Disco, a most un-Uruguayan thing to do, and a guy with a small pile of phone books asked if I wanted one. Asked my cédula (ID) number, started talking to someone on his cell phone to verify, then hand-wrote my name on a sheet of paper.
First thing, of course: check to see if we’re in it. We’re not. Did we opt out long ago? Wouldn’t surprise me.
Ah, incense! The sweet smell of …
Happy Valentine’s Day!
I saw a large plastic tub today in a ferretería (hardware store), something unusual, something very similar to what I used in Mexico to bring home vegetable market castoffs for composting. And I have a source in our local féria. With the “strong” dollar, its price of 380 pesos means thirteen and a half bucks, which seemed quite reasonable.
But its decoration raises questions for the curious mind. What does a gray plastic tub have to do with Valentine’s Day? What could it? What do a gray plastic tub and Valentine’s Day have to do with raspberries, strawberries, and butterflies? Butterflies fertilizing plants, birds and bees, love and sex? Do butterflies fertilize plants (sorry, not up for another tangential intertoobz search adventure right now)?
Help me here ….
A mobile beauty shop…
…for dogs. Not a common thing in Uruguay.
Far more common, though: not quite being on top of this “internet” thing.
Try it for yourself: doggiespa.net.
The handouts
Walking home in front of the Zoológica (Atlántida’s little zoo), the parking attendant gives me handouts:
Addiction treatment. Save your life or that of someone who needs it.
A chance for the ultimate in hair restoration. USD 160. 100% limp? Something must be lost in translation. Regardless, I’ll pass.
Stonework, plus cleaning, fill, ponds — which reminds me our tajamar in the campo, bone dry two weeks ago, is more than half full after the recent rain. More on the tajamar here, here, here, and here. Anyway, no more for now. Thanks anyway.
Funeral services. More personal • more humane • cheaper. Than what?
Parcels and freight, moving. Daily, door to door. Now this might come in handy if someone in Montevideo wants to buy the freezer we have for sale.
Might.
Selling stuff online
This is from my latest sale on mercadolibre.com.uy. A portable disk drive.The buyer sent me money through the ubiquitous Abitab. There would have been no charge had he used a Banco Republica and transferred it to my account. I then dropped the package at Tiempost for delivery to his local branch in Pocitos (Montevideo neighborhood). He can track the package online.
My last sale was yesterday. A radar detector. The buyer came to my house. Although he lives nearby, he lives on the other side of the peaje (toll booth), so he might not have been so eager … except that yesterday was a national strike, and the peaje was wide open.
The sale before that was to a guy who lived near the airport. a GPS unit. I told him I had to take a friend to a flight in a few days. He didn’t mind waiting. I phoned him from outside the airport and five minutes later he was there, and the transaction done.
It’s not Paypal and the USPS, but it’s possible.
Correa de secadora
Last Saturday, our clothes drier stopped spinning. Not entirely. Just when it had anything in it, the only time that matters.
I tore into it, took the breaking belt to find a replacement. Not happening in Uruguay, in a smallish town, on a Saturday. So Monday I went to the local appliance store. Nope. Have to go to Montevideo. How, I asked, do people in Rivera and Artigas (places several hundred km away) live, if everything has to be done in Montevideo?
The answer: telephone.
By now, I’m comfortable in person in Spanish, but I’m still a little hesitant to phone, because if you get a speed-freak mumbler on the other end (the phone company, a government entity, comes to mind) , you’re going nowhere fast. In this case, I was in luck. I confirmed datos by email, transferred money to their bank account online, and at 9 AM the next day heard a beep-beep of the truck delivering the belt.
Which was not the size I had ordered.
I emailed the company, and long story short, two and a half days later we’re up and running again. They paid the second shipment, and the return of the first.
Kudos to AMT Aspiratutto SRL!